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Reviews

Some years have passed since the brave hero Jazeta destroyed Dirth, the Emperor of Darkness.

Looking very much like it predecessor, Neutopia II plays more like an expansion pack than a fully-fledged sequel. Shamelessly stealing ideas from Nintendo’s Zelda series, this action RPG trundles along quite amiably but never really reaches the heights of the games it tries so hard to emulate. However,..

About The Game

Some years have passed since the brave hero Jazeta destroyed Dirth, the Emperor of Darkness. Peace has returned to the land of Neutopia. But there are still monsters roaming the countryside, and some of them were spotted near Yurius Shrine. Jazeta went there to find out what exactly had happened. But he didn't return. You are Jazeta's son, and you must first of all find your missing father! Can it be that the shadow of Emperor of Darkness threatens the peaceful land again?

The sequel to Neutopia is similar to the predecessor in every way. Navigating your hero from a top-down view, you explore the vast countryside, fighting monsters in real time combat. The game is not a true RPG, but an action adventure: you don't gain any experience points from combat, only collect money to buy supplies. In dungeons, you must use bombs on walls to reveal secret passages, push stones, and fight many regular enemies and bosses.

The first two Neutopia games had save features, but required an add-on to the TurboGrafx-16 such as the TurboBooster Plus or the CD-ROM. The TurboGrafx-16 VC game reviewer here doesn't seem to be very familiar with the system. I'm sure this is is due to the fact that the PC Engine/Core Grafx/TurboGrafx-16 systems were different in almost every region

Having said that, I'd rate this game on par with Zelda III (for the SNES) but focuses more on using magic than just your sword. One of my favourite alltime games.

This is an action-adventure, not an RPG. RPGs involve leveling by experience points of some sort while in an actionadventure you gain strenght by collecting the right items, even if it's something like a heartcontainer in Zelda. Although some might dissagree and say things like "you are playing a character-role" I'm just trying to make clear the technical difference so nobody can come back and say they had been missinformed ("How do I level up in this frikkin RPG (;_;)", or the likes... ).

I agree with Pocketim, this looks better than the first game. You have to play Neutopia I to get the most out of this great sequel I feel. This has more colourful graphics and better controls than the first. I love Zelda 3, so it's brilliant to have two games of a similar ilk available for download on a Nintendo system, especially when they're this good!!!

Compared to the first part, there are a few improvements: You can walk in diagonal directions, which makes the hero much easier to control. The graphics are a little nicer and the overworld of the game no longer has 4 distinct worlds, but there is one big world consisting of 10 areas which are fused together.

There is also some new equipment for the player: A boomerang that constantly flies away if you are not careful. And in addition to the fire staff, there is now a wind staff and a lightning staff. Also new is a grappling hook with its help you can collect distant items but what you almost never need. And Snow Shoes that let you walk on ice without slipping and an Aqua Lung (which looks like the Zora's Mask) that gives you the abilty to breathe under water at one point in the game. Nice.

Unfortunately, some negative points were not improved: You can, for example, only hold 2 potions at a time. When you find another one, it will be discarded. The same is true for almost all other objects, except for Boom Bombs, of which you can have a maximum of 20. At least at the end of the game. Also, I found it disappointing that there is still no in-game map in the game. I therefore recommend to download some maps from the internet. A good place to look for it is "www.vgmaps.com".

The dungeons were also not really improved. The goodies are mostly in secret rooms, hidden behind bombable walls. Because you do not get tips where these bombable walls are, you must often guess and try to find something. New in the dungeons are many invisible pressure plates, that trigger dangerous traps if you step on them.

There are 8 real Dungeons and 10 Bosses. This is because two of the bosses are in mini dungeons, which only consist of three rooms. The difficulty of the game is actually not too high, except in the last dungeon. The last boss can be very, very frustrating and annoying.

He takes away all your long range weapons and only the sword remains. Then he tackles you with your own fire-, wind- and lightning staff and drains your life bar to zero before you can even complain about it. And the worst thing is, if you die, you will be transported all the way back outside of the dungeon and must go through the whole 4 storey pyramid again. This is the point where you wish you had played the game on a PC-Emulator, where you can use savestates.

But apart from the last annoying boss, I found it enjoyable to play through the game. It is certainly not as well-engineered as "Zelda: A Link to the past" but is yet fun to play. Excluding the flaws that I noticed, there are still 3 stars I can admit.

I also gave up on Neutopia at the beginning. I kept dying repeatedly, not knowing about the healer and the saver just before the first dungeon. I gave it another go recently and having found out about them, the game has certainly improved for me and allowed me to progress much further. I'm actually enjoying it now whereas before, Neutopia II was a disappointment to me that I wished I had never downloaded. I will probably never complete it though thanks to that end boss.